IFA 2104: Hands on with Motorola's $250 smartwatch

Motorola's new smartwatch the Moto 360 will begin shipping Friday for $250. The most striking features of the device are its real watch attributes including a round face and leather strap. It's based on Android wear and has a 1.5 inch screen with a resolution of 320 by 290 pixels. To use many functions on the watch it needs to be paired via BlueTooth with an Android smartphone. After doing that the watch can receive email notifications, check your heart rate with a built in sensor or help you navigate.SOT

For the most part the Moto360 was responsive, but there were points where the watch took a bit longer than expected to open apps. The gesture navigation takes some getting used to and the device only has one hard button which is in the place of a traditional watch's crown.

The watch is water resistant for 30 minutes at a depth of up to one meter so don't expect to take it swimming, but the shower is no longer off limits. The watch isn't exactly small…it has a diameter of 46 millimeters and is 11 millimeters thick, but I was still impressed with how it looked. It was a refreshing departure from Samsung's lineup of large rectangular device made of plastic. The Moto 360 has 4 gigs of onboard storage and a 320 milliamp hour battery that should last all day, according to the company. That's quite a difference from how long the watch's traditional analog counterparts can last so if you decide to invest in this technology you'll need to be ok with charging yet another device. The Moto 360 will be available with two metal armbands later this fall for 300 dollars. At IFA 2014 in Berlin, Nick Barber, IDG News Service.